Ken has found Boris’s Achilles heel but are Londoners listening?

“Come May 3rd people won’t remember what happened before Christmas…the real campaign starts in January”, so said Liberal Democrat Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick in our interview last week.

He should hope that’s true – yesterday’s Comres poll gave him just 7% of first preference votes. That’s a long way short of where he needs to be in order to oust Ken Livingstone from the final two and have a chance of winning City Hall.

Paddick won’t be the only one hoping the poll isn’t an accurate reflection of next May’s result.

Its 46% showing for Ken Livingstone, versus 54% for Boris Johnson, would mean four years of campaigning and positioning by the former Mayor have been wasted.

Worse for Livingstone and Labour, yesterday’s poll suggests Johnson is more popular than when he won in 2008.

But as the LSE’s Tony Travers (Patron Saint of London commentators) suggested in yesterday’s Evening Standard, “there is still much to play for”.

That looks to be especially true on the issue of fares.

While Boris leads Ken on most issues, 59% of respondents agree with the statement: “In the current economic climate, tube fares should be kept as low as possible even if this means stopping upgrade works”.

And when those polled were told Livingstone planned to decrease fares, 38% said that made them “more likely” to vote for him. As Andrew Gilligan says, fares are proving to be Boris’s Achilles heel.